Europe and America

About the Author

International relations the world over are subject to a degree
of inertia. Diplomatic initiatives can remain in place for some
time after their original rationale has disappeared. This may be no
bad thing: Foreign affairs are generally too important to be
subject to sudden shifts in policy. But a major change in
international circumstances is bound, in due course, to alter a
country's outlook.

It is understandable that the end of the Cold War has led the
United States and the nations of Europe to re-examine their
relationship. For nearly half a century, Western diplomacy was
focused on the containment of Soviet military power. Differences
among the democracies were buried in the face of an urgent threat
to their way of life.

Throughout the Cold War era, the United States took the lead in
marshaling the forces of the free world. Post-war American leaders
were determined to avoid retreating into isolation as their
predecessors had after the First World War. Harry Truman, George
Marshall, and Dean Acheson, with bipartisan support from a
Republican Congress, forged an Atlantic Alliance-the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization-that was to secure the survival of Western
civilization.

Lesser national objectives were subordinated to the overriding
necessity of winning the Cold War. Thus, successive U.S.
Administrations supported the integration of Western Europe as a
vital bulwark in the Atlantic Alliance. A union of free-trading
democracies would, they believed, serve to bolster NATO and balance
the Alliance by strengthening its European pillar. They were quite
right. I and other British Conservatives shared their thinking,
which was one of the main reasons we pushed for British membership
in the European Community.

Anti-Americanism in Europe

But by sponsoring the political unification of Europe, the
United States was siding with some unlikely allies. Some of
Europe's most enthusiastic federalists were, ironically, motivated
by a conscious anti-Americanism.

Charles De Gaulle, whose looming personality dominated European
as well as French politics during the crucial early years of the
European Community, saw Europe as a bastion of civilization between
the American and Soviet power blocs. Writing in his memoirs, he
described his vision of a Europe in which "France would sit in a
position of authority on the old Continent, while America would
find herself back in her hemisphere and Britain on her island."

The same sentiment was much more prevalent on the European Left.
Some Social Democrats, especially in Germany, saw a moral
equivalence between the superpowers: The Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan was, in their eyes, no worse than U.S. intervention in
Nicaragua. A united Europe would follow a "third way" or "special
path" between what they saw as the excessive capitalism of the
Anglo-Saxons and the totalitarian communism of Asia.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a senior foreign policy
adviser to the German Chancellor called for the European Union to
step into its place as a counterweight to the United States. During
the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the
government's main poster, pushing for a "Yes" vote, showed a
caricatured American in a Stetson hat squashing the globe, and
carried the slogan "Faire 1'Europe c'est faire le poids" ["Building
Europe gives us weight"].

Just a fortnight ago, the French Foreign Minister, Hubert
Vedrine, told a meeting of French ambassadors that France could
best check the global dominance of the United States through the
vehicle of a united Europe. "There is only one great power
nowadays, the United States," he said, "but unless it is
counterbalanced, that power brings with it the risks of monopoly
domination." The solution was for France to take the lead in the
European Union, which "must gradually affirm itself as a center of
power."

I do not want to give you the impression that this type of
thinking is shared by all or even most Europeans. Many Europeans,
including British Conservatives, want to build a strong association
of independent nations, linked by trade and close cooperation, open
to the rest of the world, and forming part of a wider Western
grouping. The European Union, as one would expect, reflects both
points of view. It is sometimes protectionist, sometimes
free-trading; sometimes inward-looking, sometimes Atlanticist. Its
member states have given up some of their sovereignty, but have
stopped short of federation.

The tensions to which these different visions gave rise were
largely camouflaged and concealed by the Cold War. The primacy of
NATO and the obvious need for an American presence in Europe
displaced them. But now they are becoming more apparent. Freed from
the Soviet menace, for example, a number of the EU's more
federalist politicians have revived their plan for a separate
European defense. And they have done so at the very moment that the
United States has lost its original motive for committing forces to
Europe.

Where Do U.S. Interests Lie?

The idea of a European federation with its own armed forces may
be superficially attractive on this side of the Atlantic. The
United States has, after all, paid a disproportionate share of the
cost of defending the West. I can understand why the idea of a
cohesive Europe taking on its share of the burden is appealing.

But ask yourselves first whether such a Europe would always be a
reliable friend. Consider, for example, the attitudes of the
various European governments during the Gulf War. Had a common
foreign and security policy then been in place, there almost
certainly would have been a majority for non-intervention. As an
independent country, the United Kingdom was able to send ground and
air forces to the Gulf; as part of a European federation, we would
have had to abide by the agreed policy. The same is true of our
support for other U.S. military actions, from the Korean War to the
bombing of Tripoli and Ben-ghazi in 1985.

It remains the case that most Europeans still see NATO as the
basis of their defense and cherish their links with the United
States. But there is another view. The division of the West into
two competing economic and military blocs is not imminent; but
neither is it any longer unthinkable. If we are to preserve the
Atlantic partnership, with all its political, military, and
cultural benefits, we cannot be complacent.

America and the countries of Europe share so much. The values we
cherish-freedom, democracy, the protection of human rights-are
sometimes called European, but they are in fact Western. Europe and
the Americas have a shared history that stretches back to the
landing at Plymouth Rock. The great political and cultural forces
that have shaped the modern age were common to the Western world.
Philadelphia was a greater Enlightenment city than many European
capitals. And many contemporary European polities are based on the
principles first given force by the American Revolution.

The Challenge

The challenge is to prevent America and the European Union
developing into distant, competing blocs. How?

The key is to ensure that the European Union remains
outward-looking and flexible. The nation-state must remain the
basic building block of the European Union. People are naturally
proud of their own countries. Politicians who ignore that pride and
sense of identity do so at their peril. To undermine institutions
and ways of life which have developed over hundreds of years in the
pursuit of a federal Europe would be the utmost folly. Of course,
the peoples of Europe have common interests. They also have common
traditions and cultural roots. But it is their cultural diversity
that gives Europe its rich cultural heritage.

Europe is not a nation, and it is dangerous for the EU to aspire
to the trappings and functions of statehood while lacking real
nationality. Its people speak 30 languages and dialects and vote
for over 100 major parties. Trying to build new institutions or
transferring wide-ranging powers from long-standing institutions to
new ones will end in disaster if those new institutions do not have
the wholehearted consent of those they are supposed to serve.

That is why we oppose the creation of a federal Europe. The
Conservative vision is of an extended, free-trading Europe that
plays its full role in the Atlantic Alliance. I hope that this is
an objective in which the United States will also recognize an
interest.

And there should soon be a new dimension to the European Union.
For 50 years, the historic nations of Central and Eastern Europe
were cut off from normal political development, frozen under the
glacier of a tyrannical and alien ideology. Our priority must be to
welcome these nations, including the Baltic states, back to the
Western world.

But though the European Commission has recommended that the EU
proceed with enlargement, there is a danger that this ambition may
run up against the unwillingness of some to tackle the difficulties
which have to be overcome if it is to be fulfilled. In the case of
the Eastern and Central European countries, this incompatibility is
most visible in the fields of social and agricultural policy.
Enlargement of the Union is also incompatible with the
determination of some to centralize powers still further. The
greater the diversity of the member states, the greater the
difficulty in imposing uniformity on all.

So while I applaud the ambition of admitting six new states to
the EU by the year 2002, it is not yet clear that the EU has the
political will to make the necessary adjustments. In the Amsterdam
Treaty, the leaders of the EU have agreed to a prescription for a
deeper, not a wider Europe. That is why British Conservatives
oppose the treaty.

The Role of the United States

What of the role of America? Only the United States can be the
hinge of an effective Western partnership. It alone can provide the
political leadership and the diplomatic muscle. The U.S. is still
needed across the world, whether preserving the peace in Bosnia,
safeguarding the freedom of the Gulf states, or helping us to
ensure that China honors its commitments in Hong Kong. We must not
think in terms of European and American spheres of interest: There
are only common interests in which all lovers of freedom have a
stake. And above all, we must maintain NATO as the fulcrum and
expression of those common interests.

Fifty years ago, a Democratic President and a Republican
Congress understood that the peace and security of the world
depended on the United States becoming a European power. To their
decision we owe the preservation of our way of life and the
eventual liberation of millions from the tyranny of Communism.
Measured by its contribution to the sum of human happiness, the
Western Alliance, under American leadership, has been the most
successful coalition in history. Future generations would not look
kindly on us if, whether by design or neglect, we allowed it to
unravel.